Right now, this 576 acres produces food. It supports families. It keeps dollars moving in our community. Diode wants to replace that with a concrete pad, some cooling towers, and a promise of jobs. A promise that sounds good at first listen, but falls apart when you look at what other communities have experienced.
Let us talk about those construction jobs. 1,500 to 2,000 jobs sounds like a lot. It sounds like progress. But here is what they do not tell you: those jobs are temporary. They last two to three years, and then the crews pack up and leave. The steel goes up, the concrete dries, and the trucks roll out of town. Just like they did in Reno. Just like they did in North Carolina. Just like they will do here.
When Vantage built their data centre campus near Reno, they promised 4,000 construction jobs. What Reno got was 73 permanent positions. That is a ratio of 55 construction jobs for every 1 permanent job. Fifty-five to one. Ask yourself: is that a trade worth making?
In North Carolina, Apple received $321 million in tax incentives for a data centre that created just 50 permanent jobs. That works out to $6.4 million per job. Is that a good return on taxpayer investment? Would we accept that rate of return on any other public expenditure?
Industry analysts at CBRE and the Uptime Institute confirm that data centres typically create 50 to 200 permanent jobs, regardless of facility size. A million square feet or a hundred thousand square feet — the staffing numbers barely budge. These facilities run on automation. They are not labour-intensive. They were never designed to be.
Right now, those 576 acres support 3 to 4 farm families. Add in the agricultural supply chain — equipment dealers, feed suppliers, veterinarians, grain handlers — and you are looking at 8 to 20 direct and indirect jobs. These are permanent. These are renewable. And every dollar these families earn circulates through our local economy, year after year, generation after generation.
When a farm family spends money, it stays local. Equipment gets repaired at the local shop. Feed is bought from the local supplier. Vet calls are answered by a neighbour who lives down the road. But data centre dollars? They leak out. Servers are bought from global manufacturers. Power bills go to the provincial grid. Maintenance supplies come through national contracts with national suppliers. The economic multiplier is a fraction of what agriculture delivers to our community.
The 100 permanent jobs Diode promises require skilled trades — certified electricians, HVAC technicians, network engineers — roles that often do not exist in rural labour pools. Workers get brought in from outside the community. They commute in, do their shift, and commute out. Their paycheques do not circulate at our local diner or equipment shop. Their families do not enrol in our schools.
Communities like Peculiar, Missouri and Charles City, Virginia looked at similar proposals and asked the hard questions. Some negotiated community benefits agreements that guaranteed local hiring and tax revenue sharing. Some demanded binding commitments on job creation timelines. Some simply said no and protected their agricultural land. In every case, the communities that insisted on safeguards came out ahead — whether the data centre was built or not.
We are being asked to permanently trade agricultural land for a promise. And that promise has been broken in every community that accepted it without safeguards.
Diode’s proposal has no community benefits agreement. It has no local hiring commitments. It has no named end user. We do not even know who will operate this facility. We are being asked to sign a blank cheque with our farmland.
Learn more about what is at stake on our Evidence & Research page. Then join your neighbours and make sure Wheatland County gets the full picture before any decisions are made.